The present relates generally to a mechanism for holding a head at a position outside a record carrier. The present invention is suitable, for example, for a hard disc drive (“HDD”).
Available electronic information contents have explosively increased with the recent rapid technology developments, as in the Internet. Thus, larger-capacity magnetic storages, typified by HDDs, have been increasingly demanded to store such a large amount of information.
A slider mounted with a head floats on a disc for recording and reproducing in the HDD. As a relationship between the slider and the disc at the time of activation and halt of the disc, referred to as an interface, there are a contact start stop (“CSS”) system in which the slider contacts the disc, and a ramp or dynamic loading system in which the slider retreats from the disc at the time of stop of the disc and is held by a holder called a ramp. The conventional HDD interface mainly adopts the CSS system.
The CSS system would, however, cause crashes (or damage the disc) if frictions increase at the time of stop and sliding. In addition, since the slider is easily absorbed onto the disc, the CSS system requires a texture process that forms fine corivexes and concaves on the disc surface so as to prevent the absorption. This texture process increases cost, and becomes difficult particularly due to the reduced floating amount of the slider in the recent higher recording density and the associative demands for the flatness of the disc surface.
Accordingly, the ramp loading system has recently attracted attentions. In the ramp loading system, a non-contact between the slider and the disc when the rotation of the disc starts and stops causes no friction that would otherwise damage the disc or no absorption between them. Additional advantages are that no texture process is necessary, and the head floating amount can be reduced. In the ramp loading system, a suspension that supports the slider slides on a sliding surface on the ramp while contacting, the ramp with an elastic force in loading the slider on the disc and unloading the slider from the disc.